50 (11 page)

They went on to have a pleasant week in the city as sightseers, but there was the oddity of their appearance. He was pale and they had three-thousand-dollar suntans.

A “Green Day” was announced in the newspapers, a march and speeches in Central Park to protest nuclear proliferation. He asked the children to go with him. They were already planning to march with school friends but invited him to join the group. He tagged along behind a dozen teenagers with three other parents. At the end of the speeches people in the crowd joined hands to sing “Give Peace a Chance.” He maneuvered to get next to Karen and Andy and take their hands, feeling possessive about their idealism, which began before Broeden. This is a new way of measuring time: “Before Broeden.”

After the demonstration he brought them to the Blarney for hamburgers. A college football game was playing on a large-screen television facing the bar.

“We just got one of those,” Karen said, referring to the set. “A Mitsubishi. It’s fantastic for sports events.”

“I’m sure it is.”

Jerry says if you’re going to watch sports, you might as well see it big as life,” Karen continued. “And it really is great. You should get one, Dad.”

Jerry says?

“It’s kind of grainy,” Andy added. “It might be too big for some programs.”

“Where in the apartment is it?” Doug asked, thinking of the sheer size of those units.

“The entertainment room,” Karen said.

The entertainment room. Of course. If Harry has his own room, why shouldn’t the Mitsubishi?

“What else is happening these days?”

“Mom and Jerry have been going out to the Hamptons,” Karen said. “They’re looking at land.”

“Not to farm,” Andy commented.

“I imagine not.”

“I hear it’s pretty bleak in the off season,” Andy offered.

“I’m sure it’s lovely.”

A few weeks later the Broedens decided to buy an existing house in Westhampton on the ocean with a pool situated in the deck.

Isn’t this something? My children are richer than I am.

Broeden’s name continually entered Karen’s conversations, general information she learned from him such as how the light in the Hamptons was different from other areas in the North because of the particular relationship of the land to the surrounding water. “Boron” got to Doug. He wasn’t sure he would have dealt with graphite or wood-Plexiglas any better. The children arrived on a Sunday night and Karen had a $250 Boron Prince tennis racket with her. Broeden bought one for each child. Karen was taking tennis lessons every Wednesday night at an indoor court where Broeden had a regular game with friends, and he arranged for the pro to give a group lesson to Susan, Karen, and Andy, as well, if he chose to go. “I know it’s our time with you,” Karen said. “But would you mind Wednesdays when we’re with you if I go to the lesson? You really have to keep up the rhythm.”

“It
is
your time with me, Karen. He has half of the year to turn you into Martina.”

“But if you don’t play regularly Jerry says each week you miss you only get back to where you were when you stopped.”

“Andy, are you playing?”

“He got me a racket. I take the lessons now and then. I’d have to say I’m not going anywhere in the sports world with my tennis game.”

“Please, Dad. I love it so much. And if I stay with it, I can teach you.”

“All right. Keep your Wednesdays. But you come back here.”

“Thank you.” And she gave him a big kiss on the cheek.

Broeden had managed to buy into Doug’s time with Karen, and he was succeeding in including the children in his interest, Karen, anyway, going over to the game of the new man. This is like Sal Maglie jumping to the Mexican League. And he gets to see them now in the times before bed, Karen in a nightgown, Andy in his pajamas. Does he kiss them? Do they kiss him? He saw them kissing him, laughing with him. Where is it you’re told how to handle this? Is there a Dr. Spock for this, when your wife marries a man and he’s where you once were, and your daughter can’t give up her precious Wednesday nights with him because she’s playing tennis with her 250-goddamn-dollar racket?

Andy, a high school senior, was making his applications to colleges. The infant with soft brown eyes who sat immobilized by his snowsuit, strapped into his stroller as they went to see Patty Cake, the baby chimpanzee in the zoo, had more phone calls coming into the house than Doug, and from girls who had evidently replaced Lesa, calling to ask, “Is Andy there?” Andy was circumspect about these activities. Doug insisted he tell him where he was going and when he would be coming home. Andy’s late nights were restricted to weekends, and Doug tried to stay awake for the click of the door without drifting off and was not always successful. When they were with him, Karen and Andy often watched
Saturday Night Live
after he had fallen asleep. Once Doug had sat in living rooms necking with girls while their parents were supposed to be sleeping. He wondered then if the adults were lying awake inside, listening for the unclipping of their daughter’s bra, ready to come storming in on him. He had the answer. Those parents, those old farts, were the same age as he was now, and they were sleeping.

“Mr. Gardner, Mr. Reynolds would like to see you in his office for a meeting at one tomorrow,” Reynolds’s secretary said cheerfully, as if Reynolds wasn’t suggesting he drop everything and get on a plane.

“Doug, boy, our shining light. Look at this.” And he showed Doug a glossy four-page folder with Doug’s picture, the copy extolling his virtues with excerpts from his columns, the folder ending with “Doug Gardner, one of the people who brightens
Sports Day,
the fastest-growing special-interest newspaper in America. Reserve your advertising now or you’ll get caught off base.”

“I suppose it’s flattering to be promoted like that.”

“You sell papers, Doug. You also sell advertising. So it makes me uncomfortable to have such a key guy in our starting lineup dragging his feet so much. Let’s talk personal fitness.”

“I did a jogging column.”

“A while ago. And an antijogging column is not a jogging column. Let me give you the reason I’m so eager about this. We’ve got a new survey that shows we’re not doing as well as I’d like with women readers.”

“Isn’t a sports newspaper going to have, primarily, a male audience?”

“True. But some women enjoy sports and we should have more of them reading us. The way to hook them in is with articles they’re interested in, like personal fitness.”

“What does that mean, Robby, diets?”

“It means
you.
I want to run you on the subject, with the authority of your position.”

“Then as an authority I say we should stay a true sports paper.”

“I’ll put it to you bluntly, Doug. You’re being disloyal.”

“I’m trying to be honest.”

“Look, give me another piece on personal fitness and I’ll give you a five percent pay hike. You can think of it as a point in money for every point out of your column.”

“That’s insidious, Robby. What if I say no?”

“Why would you say no? Who says no to a raise?”

“Obviously it wouldn’t be the raise I’d be saying no to.”

“Lyndon Baines Johnson, when he was President of the United States, said, ‘I don’t trust a man until I’ve got his pecker in my pocket.’ Extraordinary, such rough language from a President. But I can understand it. You’re running a big operation, you don’t want people who are against you. You want people to be loyal and you don’t get that loyalty unless you have the pecker.”

“I don’t agree with that kind of thinking, Robby.”

“I don’t care if you agree or not. Your vote doesn’t count here. I’ve got the oilfields and the buildings
and
the paper you work for. So come up with something on personal fitness that you can live with and I can merchandise, and you can grumble all the way to the bank.”

“Robby, how crude are we going to get on this? My pecker is not for sale.”

“Give me the column, Doug. I need it to promote women readers. So figure out a way to keep us both happy and cut the New York shit!”

With John McCarthy confirming that it wasn’t better anywhere else, with Andy going to college soon and a higher tuition to pay, he didn’t see any alternatives. Resign and be scraping around for money while Broeden captivated his children with Borons and Mitsubishis? He was not in a position for gestures. He could solve this, however, if he could come up with the right piece.

“Okay. Would this satisfy you? Jane Fonda. Who’s more personal fitness than Jane Fonda? I’ll get a Jane Fonda workout video, I’ll work out with it and write a column about it.”

“Great! Entertaining. Promotable. And it doesn’t cost you your integrity.”

Reynolds rose with a broad grin and put his arm around Doug, leading him to the door, concluding in a few minutes this meeting for which he had Doug come from New York to Houston.

“Easy money,” Reynolds said.

Doug ran the video on his television set. Jane Fonda worked him out into exhaustion. He wrote for his column that in the beginning, while doing the exercises, much of what transpired with Jane was in the area of sexual fantasy, but after a while he realized not only was he not in good enough shape for a woman like that, he didn’t want to be in shape for a woman so driven for bodily perfection, and he watched the end of the tape eating a half pint of butter pecan ice cream.

Doug and his parents were at the apartment of Doug’s brother and sister-in-law for dinner. The Jane Fonda column had appeared that day and Doug’s brother complimented him on the piece.

“My contribution to personal fitness,” Doug said. “Hopefully, my last.”

“What do you mean?”

“Our publisher. He has the editorial judgment of a television programmer.”

“Who?” Frank Gardner said, coming into the kitchen where they were talking.

“It’s nothing. Just work problems,” Doug said.

“You should leave work at work is my advice,” Frank said.

“Good advice,” Doug replied. “I wonder if Robby Reynolds does that. I wonder how
he
sleeps.”

“You get along with this man?” Frank asked.

“We engage in a dialogue.”

“You could lose your job?”

“I think I’d have to push it before I’d actually
lose
my job.”

“You’re getting fired?” his mother said, joining the conversation by way of her own anxiety.

“No, as a matter of fact I just got a little raise. He hands out raises like gold stars. Nicely done, see the cashier.”

Frank was looking into the rear courtyard from the kitchen window, a faraway expression on his face.

“You stand up for yourself,” Frank said, and he turned and clutched Doug’s shirtsleeve.

“I will, Dad.”

“They think they can buy and sell you, those people. But they have no right!”

His father became aware of the grip he had on his son’s shirt and, embarrassed, patted Doug’s arm.

They.
Doug’s experience with Reynolds apparently summoned for Frank a lifetime of injustices
they
had committed.

Doug was researching a column on women’s tennis and set up an interview in the
Sports Day
conference room with two promising teenage players on the women’s circuit. The arrangements were made with their lawyer-business adviser, who was with them for the interview, a woman in her 30s, Nancy Bauer. The tennis players were from California, both blondes, one tall and thin, the other short and stocky. A doubles team, they were aggressive on the court and in the interview. They talked fast, finishing each other’s sentences, two ambitious whirlwinds. The lawyer sat quietly, composed, a slight smile on her face. The only time she contributed was when the girls were rattling on about cheating by players in junior tournaments and she steered them away from this, saying, “That’s a side issue. We don’t want to go on record about other people’s cheating.” She had such composure and presence, Doug was drawn to looking at her during the interview. She was a willowy brunette with long hair that fell loosely around her shoulders, hazel eyes, high cheekbones and a large, full nose. Doug thought that with a slight variation of her nose she would have been very pretty. In his perception the nose tipped the balance and she was “attractive,” but considering that he kept looking at her, he amended that to “very attractive” by the conclusion of the interview.

He asked if they could have “a drink” that night. She agreed, they met at the Algonquin, the time passed effortlessly, and Nancy said she had to leave. She only had time for “a drink” and that was all he had offered. A few days later he noticed
The 400 Blows
was playing at the Bleecker Street Cinema; he hadn’t seen it in years. He called and invited her to see it with him, and when she said yes he made sure to mention they would go somewhere afterward, lest she say they only agreed to “the movie.” At John’s Pizzeria on Bleecker Street they discussed Truffaut’s body of work.

“We sound like two film students,” she said. “Not that movie talk doesn’t have its place. But I’ve been with you for three hours and I don’t know anything about you.”

“Have I been boring?”

“Remote. And yes, boring.”

A woman who is not hysterical about connecting? Who won’t sit still for me when I’m boring?

“How boring have I been?”

“On a scale of ten, if ten is comatose—seven.”

“That’s very boring.”

“Yes.”

“Someone who tells me I’m boring when I’m boring! This is like the scene from
Spellbound!
Aha, that’s the secret moment that unlocks everything! I love you. I know that’s not serious, but in the context of not being serious, I love you.”

She had a hearty laugh and he laughed along in the contagion of it, wondering, hearing his little laugh, if this was another function of age and his laugh was becoming constrained, that the laugh of him was receding along with his hair.

The conversation became more personal, she told him that after Barnard and Columbia Law she worked for a Washington law firm doing labor-relations work and was now with a large New York firm.

“I’m thirty-five. I probably shouldn’t have said that, but it’s on my mind.”